The Taste of Washington, which took place over last weekend, is Washington biggest wine event and includes representatives from over one third of the state’s 600+ wineries. Waking up the day after always reminds me a little of waking up the day after Christmas as a kid. The giddy anticipation you felt the day before is replaced by an empty feeling as you realize it is over and there are 365 days until the next one.

The most difficult part of this event for me is deciding which wineries to visit. There are far too many to stop by more than a small fraction of them. I try to visit a mixture of wineries that I have experience with that have new releases and new wineries or wineries that are new to me. As always, we made it to a number of the wineries we wanted to visit but missed an even greater number. Wineries we stopped by at this year’s Taste of Washington included:

Of these, the yet-to-be-released 2006 Cabernet from Pepper Bridge (May 2009) and the 2006 Red Wine from Quilceda Creek were exceptional. Across the board the wines from Walter Dacon Wines, located in Shelton, Washington, stood out. I will post tasting notes on some of the wines sampled in future postings.

For those who attended this event, I would be interested in hearing your thoughts. For those who did not, I definitely recommend attending either the seminars and/or Grand Tasting in the future. Next up, thoughts on what worked at the event and what did not.

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Thanks for stopping by our table (Hard Row to Hoe) Sean. Maybe you can make it to Lake Chelan this summer to visit the tasting room, the Lake Chelan AVA should be close to being official by then so a good time to visit.